Ethan Byers
Lighting Artist
3D Lighting Artist for Games, Products & Architecture. Currently developing real-time lighting, scenes, and scripting, using Unreal Engine.Interested in working with me? Check out my resume and send me an email!
Real-time Lighting
Architecture & Product Renders
Technical Art
Ethan Byers
Lighting Artist
3D Lighting Artist for Games, Products & Architecture. Currently developing real-time lighting, scenes, and scripting, using Unreal Engine.Interested in working with me? Check out my resume and send me an email!
Studies
Photo Composites
RDC Pittsburgh
Banquet Hall
Rochester
High End Fridges
Alloy Chairs
Downtown Development
Banquet Hall
Product renderings for a line of banquet chairs that I developed for Webstaurantstore.In post, I enhanced a few aspects, most notably the sheen of the floor and the translucency of the cloth.I handled set design, lighting, rendering, and compositing for these images, for 5 colorways of this product as well as 24 alternative products in this environment, totaling 30 images. Models, materials, and environment were created by others.November 2021
final render
product renders of the chairs
variant 1
variant 2
High End Fridges
Product renderings for a line of Smart fridges and their desktop application for Webstaurantstore.This project was developed over 2 weeks to make 22 fridge render like these for a new line of Wi-fi enabled fridges in an upscale kitchen. Using CAD data as the base, the entire project was completed before the first fridge was shipped to our warehouses.I handled set design, lighting, rendering, and compositing for these images and their 22 variants. Models and prop materials developed by others on the team.April 2022
final render
close up shot of the UI that would control and monitor the fridge via WiFi.
timelapse
Photo Composites
Product renderings using photo backplates and assets that I developed for Webstaurantstore.I developed all lighting, rendering, and compositing for the cup images, except as noted. All Models and Materials were created by others on the team.May 2022
The Cups, Lids, and Coffee are 3D, while the Background is photography.
The Cups, Lids, and Coffee are 3D, while the Backgrounds are photography.
This scene is 3D while the props on both the left and right sides of the sink are Photography. used on 23 other sized sink basins. Compositing done by in house team.
Alloy Series
Developed renders for a series of over 800 chair and table variants. I planned the project and developed the compositing solution, then handled scene setup, final lighting, rendering, and comp/delivery.In total there are 8 sizes, 18 colorways and 4 seat variants. These were produced from a smaller number of renders using a node graph I developed in Natron that recolored the kits, distressed the paint and swapped seats. In total this graph with 8 inputs created 836 images.I handled final lighting, rendering, and compositing. Models, materials, and the base set were developed by others on the team.March-April 2022
Final base render, used as a foundational for all variants.
Natron node graph for the final render. Each section is a part of the image processing pipeline, each column is a color variant, and each small yellow square is a distinct final image.
9 of the different colors, every 2 rows being a different wood seat and every other row cropping in to focus on the chair.
RDC Pittsburgh
These renderings were developed with guidance from the lead visualizer and architect at AE7. I did the scene layout, materials, lighting, and post production for all the images, as well as modeling all the context, roads, and street assets.Late 2018
primary shot
secondary shot, with a focus on the mixed use of the restaurant
shot focused on built in parking for the development
another example of the mixed use case
Day Studies
A series of studies, each with time limits ranging from 4-8 hours. The goal of these studies were to practice alternate lighting situations and try to develop scenes we normally would not at the firm.2018 - 2019
rendering of the Neue National Gallery in Berlin. model was provided, I developed the materials, lighting, and camera.
created in ~6 hours. developed architectural, texturing, lighting, composition, and post production.
~5 - 6 hour render. created architecture, materials, composition, lighting, and post production.
Downtown Development
These renderings are composed, textured, and composited by myself with guidance from the team on the project. I also modeled the roads, sidewalks, street assets, and context.March 2019
Street View
Winter Alt
Rochester
In this render project I developed the scene layout, texturing, compositing, etc... over a 4 day period.May 2019
primary render
alternate design
Ethan Byers
Lighting Artist
3D Lighting Artist for Games, Products & Architecture. Currently developing real-time lighting, scenes, and scripting, using Unreal Engine.Interested in working with me? Check out my resume and send me an email!
PBR Cel Shader
Water & Landscape Materials
Dynamic Fog Cards
UE5 Physically Based Cel Shader
Developed a functional and PBR compliant Cel-Shader for Unreal Engine 5. Many techniques online for achieving similar results end up breaking PBR, needing unique textures and material setups to achieve the look. Here the goal was to create that anime cel shading aesthetic without needing to adjust every asset brought into the project.One special aspect was a hair and rim light system that only functions on lit areas of a mesh over a certain relative value. This can be used by artists to create distinct highlights of on hair, weapons, armor, and more without breaking PBR.Each post process material can be edited in an instance to create unique looks, and assigned as Stencils to specific objects or characters in order to adjust as needed for different scenarios and uses.October 2024
no cel shader
Light shader with auto rim light
heavy outline
special hair highlights based on the position of the directional light
Hair highlights are only visible in light, shadowed areas are removed
By separating the base values into HSV, each aspect is adjust separately to create the cel banding, shadow effects, and rim lighting, then recombined. The rebuilt frame is then only applied to meshes based on the Stencil ID
Number and blending of cel bands can be adjust for metallic and non metal areas separately,
and the rim light uses a cheap fresnel based on camera vector and the z height of the vertex
Outline is built using code from the "VisualTechArt" Discord, with a backup depth outline to maintain thickness, opacity for blending color, and normals compatibility.
UE5 Water & Landscape Materials
Developed dynamic water and landscape materials to assist in scene building. Spent a few days researching and troubleshooting these materials alongside my Master Material.The water material uses flow maps to generate the main visuals of the reflections and distortion, and features ripples based on nearby and intersecting meshes, cheap animated caustics, optional displacement, and volumetric depth with color based on the incoming atmosphere.The Landscape material is overall a simple setup with sharp edge breakup to add detail and features auto foliage generation.October 2024
Dynamic normals and displacement create overlapping ripples along objects
additional foam is added to enhance ripple
functional at different depths and allows for dynamic affected by submerged items
Organized options are easy to adjust and create different scenarios
Overall view of the material setup
Fake caustics create a cheap and believable effect that is animated across an offset, distorted, floor
The ripples are built off of nearby objects intersecting with the water mesh.
using multiple flow maps, different effects can be created alongside the variable controls
Automatic Landscape material application based on grade and painted vertex
sharp breakup along the edge adds better detail and increase overall detail
Overview of the Foliage and Blending graph
general setup for each desired layer with standard input textures
Destiny 2 -
Last City Strike
This project is still a Work in Progress, so this page will be updated as I continue to iterate.This project is an exercise in designing a "Strike" in Destiny 2. These are repeatable story missions that take 3 players through a relatively linear environment, completing objectives and ending with a boss. All assets, scripting, and character actions were created by myself with the exception of the grid material and base player model. The entire level runs between 100-80 fps, loading/unloading sections as the players move through the level.I began by analyzing other Strikes to determine what their goals are, core aspects of the activity, and where they succeed and fail. I determined these are the foundation of a Strike:Fantasy: The strike should have some form of power fantasy. Storm the castle, Hunt a target...Locations: Take the players through a location that is distinct and memorable for future runs.Mechanics: Simple enough for a new player, with goals that are simple to intuit and execute on.Flow: Should have rising action with breaks of traversal and dialogue between encounters.After brainstorming I began writing an outline, adding sketches as ideas developed. I then built a basic scale guide for traversal, combat space, and more by analyzing existing spaces in Destiny.Next I began iterating on the design in Unreal, revising through tests with myself and others, then adding details and other shapes as I became more confidant in the layout. I made sure there were optional routes available for the players, so multiple runs can remain fresh despite the linear layout.For the city section, i took inspiration from control maps in FPSs, spreading out the 3 objectives and making note of line of sight between them and enemy spawns, forcing players to keep on the move to properly defend.
Starting in the upper hangar, the fireteam makes their way down the wall scaffolding and into the lower hangar for a light combat encounter, with lots of verticality. heading through the door at the back when the enemies are defeated
traversal segment through the interior of the wall. they drop down an elevator shaft and through some maintenance tunnels to make their way back to the exterior. here they get another view of their objective, the Pyramid, as they leap down into the city.
After jumping into the city, enter objective based section. civilians are safe within the purple bubble with a guardian, but need you to clear out the attacking enemies so they can fully retreat. defend the civilians before moving on to the other 2.
smoke and the pyramid guides players to the 2nd group of civilians in the Neon Market, where enemies are climbing over buildings to attack. defeat them and take the scaffolding down the alley to cross the bridge to the 3rd bubble.
alternatively, players can follow the direction of the destroyed fountain and smoke into a nearby building, going up the stairs onto the rooftop to the 3rd bubble. enemies climb up the building and from the nearby bridge, which leads back to the 2nd point.
Ethan Byers
Lighting Artist
3D Lighting Artist for Games, Products & Architecture. Currently developing real-time lighting, scenes, and scripting, using Unreal Engine.Interested in working with me? Check out my resume and send me an email!
Paragon Character Lighting
Sci-Fi Canyon Day/Night
Ancient Watermill Study
NieR Replicant Fan-Art
UE5 Ancient Watermill Re-light Study
Developed a lighting study in Unreal Engine 5.1 by relighting the asset pack "Watermills / Nature Environment" by Leartes Studios in 3 different scenarios. All 3 scenarios share the same effects, assets, placement, and materials. Each scenario took about an hour to light, troubleshoot, and optimize (not including bake time.)Performance:
Lighting is fully baked, utilizing no dynamic GI or reflections. Ranges between 8.6 - 9 ms frame time on a RTX 3060, an i5-13600, with 16 GB RAM.July 2024
Day scene scenario. Going for a lush and vibrant environment, using traditional high fantasy concept art and animated films as color and light references.
Night Scene Scenario. Here i wanted a harsh contrast of warm and cold light, creating a tense and mildly foreboding atmosphere. initially went for a darker scene with a harsh red, but then shifted to orange and blue from red.
Healing Pool Scene Scenario. Here I wanted to go for something fantastical, like something out of a classic JRPG. I shifted focus of the scene from the back water mill to the pool of water and introduced a new custom particle system to give a mythical feel
NieR Replicant UE5 Fan-Art
Developed a scene in Unreal Engine 5.1 by modeling, texturing, and lighting assets based on the game "NieR Replicant".Additionally as a foundation for the scene, I developed a versatile Master Material that is used for all meshes in the scene, resulting in only 1 material draw call. The Master Material allows for multiple layered materials, blended normals, sticky triplanar mapping, and a low instruction count.In total the scene took 3 days to develop, a day each for creating the master material, creating the assets, and bringing it all together.Performance:
Lighting is fully baked, utilizing no dynamic GI or reflections. Maintains below an 8.3 ms frame time on a RTX 3060, an i5-13600, with 16 GB RAM.January 2025
All assets were developed by myself for this project, including materials, models, particle systems, etc...
overall view of the master material and all
compatible textures and features
material function to break multiple input normals into rgb/xyz,
blend them together, and convert them back to tangent space
material function that determines the vertex location in world and object spaces, blends partial & curved surfaces using a smoothed dithering,
and creates UVs for triplanar mapping that moves and scales with objects
material instances are easy to edit, with conditional options to hide unused inputs and settings
Examples of material instances developed while testing
UE5 Sci-Fi Canyon Day/Night Study
Developed a lighting study in Unreal Engine 5.1 by relighting the asset pack "Science Fiction Valley Town" by Scale Y with a dynamically lit time of time and custom built animated fog cards that react to the sky atmosphere.Additionally made adjustments to environment's layout to make a clear path through the level using lighting, fog, and meshes to drive the player's attention. The day and night scenes both share the same effects, assets, placement, and materials, with change made to their settings as the time of day shifts.Performance:
Lighting is dynamic, utilizing Lumen for GI and supplemental reflections. Ranges between 16 - 18.5 ms frame time on a RTX 3060, an i5-13600, with 16 GB RAM.August 2024
overall view of the material displaying both animated edges and body to the clouds, a fake volume effect using fresnel and distance, and color affected by the atmosphere
blueprint options for a placed card,
with easy to adjust textures and intensity
clouds are built using a packed texture that is used
to blend the animated edges and opacity
UE5 AAA Shooter Vertical Slice
Contracted to develop lighting for a AAA shooter vertical slice in UE5, lighting 4 multiplayer levels, develop a dynamic volumetric skybox, and bake/optimize performance for low end hardware. In addition to optimizing lighting, focused on enhancing POIs and lanes with unique lighting to improve spatial awareness and maintain dramatic visuals.Performance:
Lighting is fully baked, utilizing no dynamic GI. On higher end machines, Nanite is enabled for additional performance gains.Ranges between 8.6 - 10 ms frame time after my optimization passes on a RTX 3060, an i5-13600, with 16 GB RAM. Original performance ranged from 19 - 24 ms.August/September 2024
Shared with the permission of the developer
UE5 Paragon Character Study
Developed a character lighting study in Unreal Engine 5.1 by lighting some of the characters from Epic Games' Paragon in 4 different environments. I aimed to create distinct setups for each character and practice with a more cinematic approach to lighting to be used for cutscenes or marketing renders.Each scenario took about 2 hours to pose, light, troubleshoot, and refine. I reused previous tools i developed including my master material, dynamic water material, and fog cards blueprint.February 2025
